THE REAL MIRACLE

To me, every hour of the light and dark is a
miracle
every inch of space is a miracle.

Walt Whitman

To prove
Our almost-instinct almost true:
What will survive of us is love.

Philip Larkin

Imagine a Gothic chapel in the snow. Well, I say Gothic – late nineteenth-century. It’s a cemetery chapel, quite near our house, and it was done up for Christ’s birthday, as it were, last year, with candles and a bit of holly and, I think for the first time, a carol concert was held in it. I wrote this occasional poem:

Note: John Clement Bell, of Clayton and Bell stained glass, lived in Kingdon Road, West Hampstead and is buried in our local cemetery. Sir Walford Davies, who succeeded Elgar as Master of the King’s Musick, lived in Fawley Road, whilst his friend Frederick Rothwell, who, as organ builder to the Queen, was commissioned to rebuild the organ in St George’s Chapel Windsor, had his workshop just across from the cemetery in Fortune Green Road.

A HAPPY CHRISTMAS TO YOU ALL!

Photo by EP

6 thoughts on “THE REAL MIRACLE”

jentay61

December 25, 2011 at 12:49 pm

Wonderful,another moment of sanity in the "madness". Also, the new portrait of you is SO good! Many thanks for all the gems of 2011 and hoping for many more.